Bilingualism In Early Childhood

In his article, Dan Carsen discusses the challenges with bilingual education in the Southern United States. Although he recognizes the obstacles present in this system, Carsen does argue for bilingual education. By appealing to ethos, pathos, and logos, Carsen properly describes the difficulties and importance in implementing bilingual education in the South. Carsen successfully appeals to ethos by conducting several personal interviews to capture real-world experiences. The first interview mentioned in the article is with Angelina Baltazar, a bilingual student at Tarrant High School.

In the essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” (1981), Richard Rodriguez, an experienced writer, expressed that “…it is not possible to for a child – any child – ever to use his family’s language in school” and began expressing his past experiences with bilingualism (510). Rodriguez recollects his feelings toward the accents he has listened to throughout his childhood, his “disabling confusion” from gaining fluency in English and Spanish, and the intimacy passing between sounds and words (519). By implementing his personal experiences, he entices his reader into reading actively in order to express how confusing, yet beneficial bilingualism can be. Rodriguez’s audience is focused to those who can relate when using more than one language

Adults who attempt to learn a new language can understand the logic of the new language but can’t fully master jargons, diction, and exceptions to grammar rules. Researchers discovered that when adults mastered two languages in childhood, both languages were located in the same areas of the brain with no influence on the cortex. Bilingual adults keep the two languages unconnected, starting one and temporarily stopping the other when speaking to an individual who only speaks one

During the 1970’s, California was in an uproar of submersion of bilingual education in the public education system. This period of permissive was a landmark for bilingual education because Lau V. Nichols marked a movement that lead to assimilation to redefine unification of the Americanization in the United States during this period. First, to understand the movement, in 1906 the Nationality Act passed that implicated the first legislation that required incoming immigrants to speak English as the dominant language (Barker, 2011). I believe in order to understand what is going on in the present you have to understand the history.

In the essay Rodriguez challenges the idea of bilingual education, he takes us through his personal experience of a bilingual childhood where he talks about what he encountered in America as he attempts to adjust to the American culture, and how he preserved his intimacy with his family even through the language barrier. Throughout the essay, we soon see that his identity and success is tied to the place and how he was raised, his parents are a major part of his success. Richard Rodriguez was Born in a Mexican immigrant family, him and he’s family moved to California, so he had to adapt to the new and unfamiliar situation, where the culture and language is completely different, therefore making him feel like he did not belong in the American culture. There was something Richard said that was really interesting, he said “An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white.”

In the essay, "Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood", Richard Rodriguez explains his opinion on bilingual education based on his own childhood experience. He provides reasons why it would be retrogressive to permit the non-English speaking children use their family language as the language in school. In defending his positions, he provides three ideas to support his position: • The use of family language impedes child’s social growth. Insistence on using Spanish language at home made Rodriguez and his older sister and brother to be socially disadvantaged at school.

Most individuals are apprehensive about changes, but there may be no reason. Changes can bring benefits to those who experience them. In the essay “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” Richard Rodriguez explores his life as a bilingual child. He discusses the many changes he experiences as he goes from being fluent in Spanish to being fluent in English. Rodriguez dissuades the reader against bilingual education which is the education of nonnative English speakers in their native language.

However, in order for one to truly understand the arguments made by the authors they must also understand the context behind these arguments; therefore, knowing how the individual authors’ definition of bilingualism lets the reader truly absorb what points they’re trying to make and why. In Espada’s essay, he defines bilingualism as a way for a person to remain in contact with their different cultural identities. There are many areas in the essay where the reader could interpret this definition from. However, the most significant piece of evidence appears at the beginning of the essay where Espada mentions his friend Jack Agueros’ analogy to describe his bilingualism “English and Spanish are like two dogs I love. English is an obedient dog.

If students begin their bilingual education as early as kindergarten, they are more likely to successfully acquire a second language. Children are like sponges and soak up information easily. Research conducted by Dr. Patricia Kuhl at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington shows that by 8-12 months, if babies are exposed to a second language, they retain the ability to distinguish those foreign sounds. Moreover, through the age of 7 or 8, children are able to learn to speak a second language with fluent grammar and without an accent.

A person who speaks more than one language is described as being bilingual. According to the United States Department of Education, “about 21% of school-age children speak a language other than English at home,” (Lowry, 2011). As Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier describe in, “Two Languages are Better Than One,” children who come into school having a first language besides English, tend to struggle. Usually when a child struggles with a particular subject, they are taken out of the main classroom and brought somewhere for a remedial class. But according to Thomas and Collier, in order to help narrow the gap in comprehension, English learners and English speakers need to be kept together in order to be fully enriched in a successful learning

The learners at the age of 3-5 are able to remember plenty of things just via using receptive skills. Their ability and range of remembering things is quite large. Very young learners are able to acquire the language only by listening. Until the age of 5 children are able to learn target language at the native speaker level, therefore the bilingual education is very prosperious and beneficial when started in the early age. Linguists and researchers as Purcell, Lee, Biffin, Baker distinguish other division of bilingualism and bilingual education.

Language development is a critical part of a child’s overall development. Language encourages and supports a child’s ability to communicate. Through language, a child is able to understand and define his or her’s feelings and emotions. It also introduces the steps to thinking critically as well as problem-solving, building and maintaining relationships. Learning a language from a social perspective is important because it gives the child the opportunity to interact with others and the environment.

The ability to develop foreign language become reduces. Besides the age factor Experience and school environment as well as the teaching. They play an important role in the development of language skills. So the bilingual is necessary: using

The questionable and ambiguous nature surrounding the notion that children play an active role in acquiring language has been debated by many theorists of different perspectives. These three perspectives include the learning view, the nativist view and the interactionist view. In this essay I will discuss each perspective with reference to psychological theories and research that relates to each view. The learning perspective of language acquisition suggests that children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957). The ideology behind this view claims that children develop language by repeating utterances that have been praised by their parent, therefore gaining a larger vocabulary and understanding of phrases over

CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction Definition and backgrounds of theories and concepts connected to this study are provided in this chapter. Reviews of previous studies on code-switching, bilingualism and computer mediated communication which are homogenous to this study are provided. 2.1. Bilingualism 2.1.1. Definition of bilingualism